Departures of 3 surgeons forces temporary shutdown

Shands HealthCare at the University of Florida has suspended its liver and pancreas transplant programs after the sudden departure of three of its four organ transplant surgeons.

The Gainesville transplant center took the action Friday and over the weekend tried to notify all 125 patients waiting for new organs.

"If you have a busy transplant program, and you lose even a couple surgeons, it's a major blow," said Dr. Kevin Behrns, chairman of surgery at UF's College of Medicine. He is working to recruit multi-organ surgeons who are trained to transplant livers, pancreases and kidneys.

Patients waiting for a new liver or pancreas will be placed on another hospital list until Shands can reopen its program, he said. The move should not delay their treatment. The United Network for Organ Sharing is working with Shands to connect patients to other transplant centers. The nearest ones are the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida Hospital in Orlando and Tampa General Hospital.

"We know the feeling, and are ready to help any way we can," said Robert Metzger, medical director of transplant surgery at Florida Hospital, which had to inactivate its heart transplant surgery program temporarily last November when a lead heart transplant surgeon suddenly died. "We're all in this together."

The three surgeons left Shands to work at transplant centers at the University of Minnesota, Emory University in Atlanta and Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

The move to inactivate the program is voluntary and temporary, said Behrns, who hopes to reactivate the program within a few months. The Shands heart, kidney and lung transplant programs are not affected. In 2010 Shands performed 59 liver and pancreas transplants, and so far this year has performed 36.